


Dance in the Moonlight

by sister_wolf



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-14
Updated: 2003-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 09:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_wolf/pseuds/sister_wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Jack dances in the moonlight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance in the Moonlight

Jack dances in the moonlight, on nights when the moon is full and the wind pushes clouds scudding across the sky. He sways and turns, eyes closed, his body moving to music only he can hear. Sometimes he sings, an eerie sound, wordless, tuneless, but filled with such longing that Elizabeth shudders to hear it. He's never said what calls him out of their warm bed to dance alone in the moonlight. She's never dared to ask.

The pale light glitters off the beads he wears in his hair, glints off the jewels and gewgaws he collects, like a magpie attracted to shiny objects. He wears no shirt, only the short trousers of a sailor, and his feet are bare on the wooden planking of the deck. His hands are raised to the sky, his head tilted back, face pale and strangely blank as he sings to the moon.

She remembers white bone in the moonlight, tattered finery on a skeleton's frame, Jack with his sword clutched in a bony hand and his gold teeth bared in a corpse's grin. Elizabeth draws the blanket closer around her shoulders, chilled to the bone though the night air is mild.

Strong arms wrap around her waist and draw her back against Will's bare chest. He drops his chin onto her shoulder and sighs, watching Jack dance alone. "Thought you were still asleep," she murmurs.

"I was cold." Though he won't admit it, she knows that he woke from a nightmare. Not all of Will's scars are visible ones.

"The moonlight woke me," she says, not needing to add what he already knows, that she can no longer sleep in moonlight, not since its bleak, pitiless light proved to her that ghost stories can be real.

"Jack," Will calls softly. "Come to bed, love."

Jack turns to face them, swaying, and his eyes are black pools of nothingness, terrifying her for a moment until he blinks and smiles, and the spell is broken. "Dance with me, my lady," he invites, arms spread wide.

Elizabeth begins to protest-- the hour is late, the wind is sure to give them a chill-- but Will hushes her gently. "He needs this," Will says, and she acquiesces without a murmur, for while she and Jack are sometimes _too_ alike, it is Will who always understands them.

Will pulls the blanket from her shoulders and drops it to the side, leaving her clad only in her thin cotton nightgown. She feels as if she's floating, passing over the deck of the Black Pearl as weightlessly as a ghost. She stops in front of Jack, uncertain again, but he sweeps her a courtly bow and draws her into a drunken waltz.

Elizabeth feels as if she is in a dream, as she waltzes with a pirate captain across the hushed, silent deck of a legendary pirate ship, her dance partner humming tunelessly to himself, her husband watching them fondly from the open door of their stateroom.

"What's that you're singing?" she asks, dizzy from the unexpected turns and dips of Jack's unique interpretation of the waltz.

"Hmm? Oh, the music. Can't you hear it?" Jack slows and sways from side to side, holding her tightly, his free hand low on her hip in a way that would be scandalously inappropriate, if this were a proper ballroom and she were a proper lady. "She sings to me. The moon. Tells me of buried treasure and sunken ships, of pirate ships gone to their doom at the bottom of the ocean. Skeletons still clinging to the ropes, the captain still at the helm, fruitlessly trying to steer them off the rocks."

"Surely that isn't all she sings of," Will says, sliding his arms around Jack from behind, resting his chin on Jack's shoulder without needing to stoop as he would with Elizabeth. "Doesn't she sing of the open water, of the promise of the horizon, of white sails catching the wind?"

Jack closes his eyes, still swaying gently, and seems to listen for a few minutes. "Oh aye," he says finally. "Sometimes she does."

Will kisses his neck, the edge of his jaw, and whispers into his ear, "It's our horizon, Jack. No cursed gold, no vengeful ghosts. You have a fine ship, a good crew, the open sea, and two people who love you." He closes his teeth gently around a gold hoop-adorned earlobe and tugs once. "Savvy?"

Jack chuckles a little, and his eyes are bright with more than moonlight when he opens them once more. "Savvy."

"Come to bed, love," Elizabeth murmurs, leading him out of the cold moonlight and back into the warmth of their embrace.


End file.
